


keep the furnace burning

by trite



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Antagonistic Sex, Felching, M/M, Mild Breathplay, Post-Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Rough Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-18
Updated: 2021-03-18
Packaged: 2021-03-23 16:33:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,217
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30058341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trite/pseuds/trite
Summary: They only inhabit the same spaces for brief intervals of time. The threat of danger always hanging over them. A feature and not a bug.
Relationships: Poe Dameron/Armitage Hux
Comments: 4
Kudos: 33





	keep the furnace burning

**Author's Note:**

> My Id, unfiltered.

The problem with Dameron, Hux thinks, is that no one else compares. He doesn’t mean that to be flattering or unflattering, just factual. On the other hand, Hux wonders if maybe that’s only a problem for him.

“The problem,” Dameron says with an expansive gesture of his hand. He enjoys talking too much, even though his mouth has much better uses. “Is that you’re much more palatable like this.”

“I was thinking the same thing,” Hux says from the bed, watching Dameron zipping up his pants and fiddling with his belt. He never even takes off his boots. He also doesn’t go anywhere near the fastenings of Hux’s clothing, though he claims that’s just because it would take too long for him to figure them out. “You’re only tolerable when your mouth is otherwise occupied.”

Dameron laughs; a vibrant, alive sound that Hux is unused to hearing, in him and anyone else. “If you’re trying to insult me, you’re missing the mark, buddy. I’m very proud of how easily I can get you to lose it.”

He leaves without saying goodbye or approaching Hux again. They only inhabit the same spaces for brief intervals of time. The threat of danger always hanging over them. A feature and not a bug.

“Turn around. I don’t wanna see your face,” Dameron tells him the first few times they fuck.

Hux goes from turning to face the dirty, sticky, and downright disgusting side of the stall to burying his face in the clean sheets of the room Dameron pays for after the second time. It feels like some sort of concession but it just serves as proof that Rebels are more concerned with self-gratification than with doing their jobs.

“Does that help you forget that you shouldn’t be prioritizing your needs over those of your cause?” Hux asks but he genuinely doesn’t care. Dameron fucks and does it well.

He makes it good and makes Hux come as many times as he can, or more accurately, as many times as Hux’s body allows. It’s a shame that in his youth he only fucked people who were passable, at best. Extremely mediocre if compared to Dameron.

It must be a matter of pride or ego for him; like the way he wraps his lips around Hux’s cock and doesn’t have to talk to say _look at what I can do better than you_. It’s unimportant so long as Hux gets that same igniting feeling under his skin every time he comes.

Afterward, Dameron pants against his back, rests his head against his spine, his warm breath brushing Hux’s skin. “You’re suffocating me,” Hux says.

“I’m sorry,” he says before moving away. It sounds so heartfelt that Hux recoils.

They’ve done it enough times that Hux now knows Dameron doesn’t always fuck rough but he always commits to the task, throwing himself into it completely unafraid of the pieces of himself he might leave behind. He likes to bite and leave marks, to tenderly press his lips against Hux’s neck and work the skin, his lips soft and his teeth relentless.

Hux goes back home with a map of bruises on his body for company. They fade after a couple of days but Hux can always go back for more.

“We have nothing to give to each other but this,” Dameron says, offering him a glimpse of whatever lies behind the overcompensating façade he wears around Hux. He’s still lying next to him on the bed that’s too small to comfortably put space between their bodies, restless energy coming from him in waves. There’s something impressive about the way he’s able to put his thoughts together immediately after fucking, though.

He sounds tired or maybe conflicted but Hux is more familiar with the former. Hux commits and doesn’t waver, prides himself in the ways it has benefitted him in the past. Lately, he wonders about the ways it could benefit someone else.

“That’s not—” Hux says and stops himself.

“What?” He doesn’t move but seems closer somehow. He hasn’t killed Hux yet, possibly has some scruples about killing someone he’s fucking, but this kind of proximity is dangerous.

“That’s not a bad thing,” Hux says. The only way he’ll let himself be near Dameron in any meaning of the word is when he’s reaching for his cock.

“Don’t get too comfortable on this nowhere rock of a planet,” Hux says, wiping his hand across his mouth.

This is the first time. Not the first time they’ve done this. The first time Hux has given something away.

Before he can move from his position on the floor, Dameron leans down, his hand hot on the back of Hux’s neck, and brings their mouths together; the brush of their lips, tongues, deep and unhurried; the way it only is when Dameron searches his taste in Hux’s mouth.

“What’s my headstart?” he says against Hux’s lips.

“You have until I get back to the shuttle.”

Before Hux leaves, he presses him against the door, loosely holding onto Hux’s wrist, his touch easy. Easier because Hux lets him which is infinitely worse than the alternative. “Don’t take the scenic route on my account.”

They’ve been doing this for only a couple of months, which perhaps goes to show that time isn’t always equal to investment.

The Resistance — what little remains of it — went, in a relatively short period of time, Hux notes with reluctant admiration, from hiding and running away to actively recruiting and rebuilding. In the in-between, they needed to scout a place to settle in. An endless trail of backwater moons and planets, one remote rock after the next.

One bad idea trailing another.

Rather than a handful of minutes, they have spent close to two hours in this room. Hux is resting against the headboard and Dameron is lying next to him across the bed, facing him. He keeps tracing the bones in Hux’s ankle, the tendons in his left foot.

“Have you established a base yet?” Hux asks. He should be doing more than just enjoying himself here.

Dameron’s touches stop before resuming. “Why? You want the coordinates? That’s horribly lazy of you.” He pauses. “Wait, no, horribly Rebel scum-y of you. What was it you said? That we were entitled and complacent? Definitely not one of your best speeches.”

“You’re watching my speeches?”

“They’re very informative. And your eyes look really nice in some of them.”

Hux scoffs. “Just don’t answer the question.”

Dameron lets out a sound that could be mistaken for a laugh. Hux can’t decide what it is.

Dameron lets go of him, presses one hand to the middle of Hux’s back, and holds him against the table as he pulls out and comes across the small of his back, his ass.

He slumps forward, their skin sticking uncomfortably together, and reaches for Hux’s dick, his touch firm and almost painfully tight, the way Hux likes it.

“Come on, come on,” he pants against Hux’s back, turns Hux’s head to the side, and bites on the junction of his neck and shoulder where Hux’s uniform will probably — definitely — cover it.

There is a freedom to being around him, Hux decides. Not freedom from captivity but freedom to let himself be pulled under the weight of questionable decisions.

In the end, it’s not even a particularly difficult decision to make because, in his mind, he has already decided.

He starts officially feeding them information three months after they start fucking and that day Dameron lets Hux fuck him. Hux wonders if maybe he means it as a reward for good behavior, but finds he doesn’t care enough when he’s pressing the slick head of his cock into him.

Hux doesn’t think that’s what this is, though. That system of give and take would be too familiar to what Hux is used to, and if there’s something Dameron’s behavior isn’t, is familiar.

He pushes back against Hux‘s hips, and says, “come on, is that this the best you can do?”

He’s bent over the bunk in his ship, his head hanging low and his hands gripping the mattress as Hux rocks into him. His pants and underwear are around his knees, though he carefully took off his blaster holster and put it safely away from Hux. As if Hux would have any room in his brain for anything but this.

Dameron eagerly fucks back into his cock but avoids touching himself. Hux feels as if his skills are being wildly overestimated if he’s expected to make Dameron come untouched.

Hux pulls him harder against his thrusts and refrains from burying his fingers in Dameron's hair, pushing his face into the bedding and keeping him from talking. Dameron expressly forbade him from going near his hair. He must assume everyone is just desperate to get his hands on him, to put him on his knees and hold him in place, Hux thinks as he grips his shoulder and pushes him down, changing the angle and moving faster, deeper into him.

That’s the problem with, or the advantage to, repeated exposure: being left with an unwanted and ultimately useless sense of familiarity.

Afterward, he stares at Dameron from the bunk, as he rights his clothes; the sight of his naked skin disappearing is almost more familiar to Hux than the feel of it under his hands.

There’s an idea rattling in his head, threatening to manifest and become tangible. _And what about you?_ he had asked Hux, but Hux isn’t thinking about his future in a hypothetical scenario where they take down Kylo Ren. He isn’t thinking about it except in all the ways that he is.

He lives in fear that this was Dameron’s plan all along. To literally seduce him into becoming a traitor. It’s not giving Hux enough credit. He is perfectly capable of committing treason out of his own initiative.

He must stare for too long because Dameron, who shamelessly enjoys being ogled, says, “what? Are you sulking?” He pauses with his pants still undone and approaches Hux. “Don’t you guys believe in the value of self-improvement? Oh wait, you guys believe that if you’re not good enough then you should spare the Order your failures, right?”

It’s true but a resentful and hard to ignore part of him feels that the reverse should also be true. The Order should spare Hux its failures.

Before Hux reaches the exit hatch, Dameron says, “hey, you keep me coming back. That’s gotta soothe your wounded ego.”

It’s not like Dameron could get it as good anywhere else. The information, that is.

Hux goes back to the _Steadfast_ feeling sweaty and sticky under his clothes, like Dameron’s skin is still rubbing off against his. He takes a shower, one with actual water, almost reaching the limit of allocated water usage for the week.

He sheds his uniform like skin.

There’s something savage and alive in him that he associates with Dameron and with the secrets surrounding him that Hux carries and keeps.

He wonders which one will kill him first.

Six months in and they have amassed a substantial, if not very methodical, list of ways to bend and break their bodies around each other.

He stares at the ceiling of the motel room, still panting, the sweat cooling unpleasantly against his skin, and fixates on the flickering light panel above him so that he doesn’t have to see Dameron redressing in front of the bed.

It’s daylight, which feels inexplicably significant to Hux, but the blinds are drawn shut — Dameron's doing, as soon as they entered the room — leaving them bathed in near darkness, forcing them to guide themselves by touch and the on and off whims of the room’s poor illumination.

Somewhere along the way, meeting up with someone he shouldn’t give access to his location, let alone his body, has started to seem like a less terrible idea than following what passes as Ren’s strategic orders.

The actual first time was a chance encounter. Genuine happenstance.

Dameron bit his lip and frowned, looking confused for a second while his hands moved over Hux’s clothing. He seemed real and human, like something that could traverse Hux’s fantasies.

When his fingers brushed over his neck, Hux said, “there’s an eyelet in the back,” and when Dameron pushed closer, bringing their hips together, he added, “leave it,” and moved his hands to his ass, grinding against him.

Dameron fucked him hard, fast, and dirty against the wall of the ‘fresher stall they were in, his thrusts hectic and the burn of his cock perfect. He had turned Hux around and pushed his fingers into his mouth, said, _how much do you want it to hurt?_ when Hux, tired of fellating his fingers after what felt like an hour, drool dripping out of his mouth, had asked how wet he was supposed to get them.

Dameron slumped against his back after he came, his cock still inside Hux. He had even made sure Hux came first, though at one point Hux had felt certain he wouldn’t need any assistance; had thought _I just need this, I just need this_ feeling the brutal drag of Dameron’s cock in him.

He moved back and Hux turned around with a satisfying wince. Dameron was carding his fingers through his hair, looking elsewhere, as he said, “next time I’ll kill you.”

“Maybe you should ask yourself why you decided to stick your cock in me rather than blast me _this time._ “

Hux wasn’t complaining, though. He didn’t even feel like complaining the next day when he was too sore to comfortably sit.

Hux couldn’t stop thinking, for days on end, _Dameron likes to fuck rough and leave his partners sore_.

He had deliberately sought him out the next time.

“I don’t believe this is how the Empire and the Rebellion traded secrets,” Hux says, trying to sound less breathless than he feels. He’s usually better at controlling his reactions but Dameron is very, very good.

He doesn’t need any encouragement from Hux, though. He already has a — an accurate, Hux will admit to himself — high assessment of his sexual prowess. It doesn’t stop him from constantly asking Hux _like this? Tell me how you like it_ and viciously using that information to unravel Hux further and further each time.

“That we know of,” he says, gracefully standing up from where he kneels between Hux’s legs and going to the table to grab a bottle of water.

He makes a spectacle out of everything, Hux thinks as he watches him swallow, lick his lips. Hux wishes he could get hard again.”Weren’t your parents heroes of the Rebellion?”

“Fuck off,” he says easily because no matter how hard Hux tries — and it’s embarrassing to find himself trying harder in this than in killing him — Hux can’t quite get under his skin the same way he gets under Hux’s.

“Okay, you’re terrible at this,” Dameron says and not for the first time, either. Considering Hux doesn’t get much practice time in he thinks his progress has been considerable.

Dameron pushes him off his cock with a small nudge to his forehead and runs his fingers through Hux’s hair, back and forth, until he’s content with how mussed it is.

Despite everything else they’ve done to and with each other, the gesture is shocking to Hux. It feels weirdly intimate and overly familiar. No one else has certainly ever done that to him.

Before Hux can figure out a way to respond, Dameron is gripping his hair, pulling him closer, and telling him, “mind the teeth. I’ll do all the work, just keep it open and wet for me.”

He moves in and out of Hux’s mouth slowly at first, then moves Hux’s head up and down, testing how far he can push him and how long he can keep him down. It’s weirdly patient despite the rhythmic way he slides his cock past Hux’s teeth, over his tongue, and briefly toward the back of his throat.

Hux can only get him close when one of them is chasing some sort of release and, perhaps less unrelated than he would like, Hux finds himself not minding how long it takes. It definitely goes on for longer than when Dameron has his mouth on him, though that’s a testament to Dameron’s skills and not Hux’s stamina.

“Kriff, you look good like this,” he says, and while Hux doesn’t mind being kept on his knees with Dameron’s cock hot and hard in his mouth, he resents that it keeps him, but not Dameron, from talking.

He snaps his hips faster, making Hux’s eyes water, and then keeps him down with his cockhead bumping Hux’s throat for a long time until his throat hurts and his lungs burn. He flexes his fingers uselessly where they’re splayed over Dameron’s knees. He could push him away or stop being careful with his teeth and Dameron would release him, but Hux enjoys the painful struggle for oxygen, the fast way his heart beats, the sense of overpowering dizziness, the darkness that threatens his vision.

Too soon Dameron pulls him off and, even as he’s desperately gasping for air, Hux moves closer and goes back down.

Hux makes no move to assist him as Dameron struggles with his clothing. He would rather they got on with it but Dameron, for some reason, wanted to do it himself and he seemed to think they had the time. So Hux waits patiently on the bed. Or at least, he can claim inward patience. Every time Dameron’s fingertips run over his clothes, his body jumps and responds. Traitorously so.

“Got it,” he finally says, sounding far too satisfied with himself considering the task took him ten times as long as it usually takes Hux. He starts to lower Hux pants, his fingers finally connecting with skin. “Oh, that’s nasty.”

“Just what I want to hear when you’re taking off my pants,” Hux says.

“I mean the bruise.” He nudges Hux to his side. “How did you get this?”

“I fell.” _Against a console_ , he doesn’t add.

“How?” He’s tracing the edges of the bruising; his fingers careful and slow, only pressing the skin surrounding it.

Hux only allows the touch out of shock. Dameron’s never touched him like this before, possibly won’t do it again unless Hux makes a habit of inspiring pity in him.

“One second I was upright and the next I wasn’t. I’m sure you’re familiar with the logistics of a fall.”

“Must’ve been quite a nasty fall,” he says, some hidden meaning behind his tone. Hux doesn’t care to decipher it.

“You have seen the surfaces of star destroyers.”

“Yeah, I’m familiar with their sharp edges and impenetrable walls.” He uses both hands to frame the bruise but can’t cover the length of it. It goes from Hux’s side, under his ribs, to his thigh; long and misshapen. “Does it hurt?” he asks quietly, the back of his hand brushing the side of Hux’s hard and neglected cock.

“Do you want it to?” Hux pictures him digging his fingers into the purple-bluish skin, making him hurt where he feels only an ache, a vague discomfort. Maybe Dameron would like to add bruises of his own. Ones that hurt, unlike the ones he leaves on Hux’s hips.

“No,” he says, rolling Hux over onto his front.

He fingers him open for a long, long time until he deems Hux ready to take him, to feel the stretch of the blunt head of his cock breaching his body.

The bruises seemingly hold no more interest to him because he doesn’t even press against them as they fuck, doesn’t even wrap his hands around Hux’s hips to pull him harder into his thrusts.

It’s good and weirdly relaxing until he wraps his palm around the base of Hux’s cock while he comes inside him, keeping Hux from coming.

He rests his face against Hux’s back, rubbing his stubble against his skin, and breathing laboriously.

“I haven’t come,” Hux feels the need to remind him because, even though Hux is perfectly capable of taking care of it himself, Dameron is always eager to do it for him and Hux has gotten used to that.

“I know, gimme a second,” he slurs sleepily.

Hux always gets a small second of regret when Dameron slips out of him, feeling it like an intense loss, but he doesn’t get to dwell on it before Dameron starts rearranging his body on the bed.

He tilts Hux’s hips up and presses his chest more firmly against the bed as he trails kisses from the top of his spine to the low of his back. He spreads Hux open with his hands, squeezing a couple of times, and trails his mouth along the curve of Hux’s ass, moves his tongue lower and inside, until he’s pushing his tongue into him.

Hux can feel his face growing warm, getting red and blotchy, he buries it on the cool fabric of the pillows but his moan still rings loud in the room.

“Do I stop?” he asks, his breath brushing against him, sending shivers all over Hux’s body.

“No, keep going.”

He keeps him spread open with his thumbs and licks over and into Hux again, pressing his tongue flat against him, searching. _He came inside me_ , Hux thinks as he feels him suck his own come out of Hux’s body. His thighs tremble as he pushes back, presses into his tongue, his wet and open mouth, feeling mindless.

“I like tasting myself in you,” Dameron says as he pulls back and pushes two fingers inside him, spreading him where he’s already been fucked open. It takes two strokes of Dameron’s hand around his cock for Hux to come, falling forward onto the mattress.

“You hadn’t done that before.” Dameron sounds amused and satisfied as he says it. He’s been passively watching Hux struggle to regain his composure without commentary until now but of course, it couldn’t last.

“What of it?” Hux has endured enough comments about how prudish and repressed he supposedly is just because he doesn’t fuck aliens or whatever else it is that Dameron does. Maybe he even fucks aliens before he comes and sticks his cock in Hux. The thought makes him angry enough that he turns his head so he can better glare at him.

“What?” he says with a laugh. “I didn’t mean anything by it. I liked doing it.” He brushes his fingers very lightly and very briefly over the bruise on Hux’s side but doesn’t press.

“What is this?” Hux asks as he sits across from him at the diner, it’s so rundown that he doubts they’ll encounter anyone of import here but it’s a public place. He means the question to encompass the unwelcome change of locale. Hux would even go back to meeting in public refreshers over this.

“Food,” Dameron says, deliberately misinterpreting Hux’s question. “You know, what people who don’t subsist on nutrient paste eat.”

“I don’t—”

“You put it your mouth, swallow. It’s good for you.” As far as flirting goes, it’s not his best effort. Dameron’s obnoxious brand of flirting, however annoying Hux finds it, always feels personal. Perfectly tailored to get a reaction out of him, designed with no one else in mind. Hux can appreciate it on those terms, at least.

“We could be doing those things in a different context,” Hux reminds him.

“In public? You never fail to surprise me.” He says it with barely any interest, though. Nothing but an act.

Hux sighs. “What is it?”

He pushes his plate away and leans his elbows on the table, rests his face on one hand. “It didn’t work. There wasn’t enough time and we couldn’t get everyone out before the Order got there.”

The settlement on Cidatune, then. “It’s war. People will die and suffer and get hurt, sometimes needlessly so. Feeling guilt or crying about it helps no one. Get over it.”

“Okay, thanks for the unwanted and unasked for pep talk.”

Hux looks around the place. They aren’t the only ones in it but the booths have some sort of ornamental canopies that make it difficult to see who is inside each booth, or even which booths are occupied. “Are we staying here?” he asks, turning back to him.

“Yeah, I don’t have time for anything else. I have somewhere else to be. A mission with Finn.”

It’s more detail than he usually offers Hux about his activities but Hux wasn’t asking and, as such, doesn’t care. “Well, have fun with that.”

Dameron scoffs. “Don’t give me the jealous act.”

“I would never be jealous of a stormtrooper.”

“Just give me the intel so I can get out of here,” he says glaring.

Before Hux can retrieve the datadisk, a server droid approaches them and sets a plate in front of Hux.

“What is this?”

“Oh, right. I ordered it for you. It’s not poisoned or anything.”

Hux doesn’t know at this point what’s more telling: that Dameron felt the need to say it or Hux didn’t need him to.

Whatever it is, it has a smooth, flat, and pink dense surface. It’s vaguely oval-shaped with its edges not quite crossing the inside golden borders of the white plate.

“You have to crack it first. It’s soft on the inside.”

“Is this a commentary on something?” It’s the kind of pointed and unsubtle jab he expects from Dameron.

“No,” he says slowly. “Is that how you see yourself?” He laughs, this time sounding genuine. “Go ahead. Try it before I leave.”

It’s soft and sticky-sweet on the inside. It’s okay, he supposes. “It’s fine.”

“I knew you’d love it.” He leans back on the booth and doesn’t leave until Hux finishes the dessert.

Hux has to keep pausing to drink water every other bite. It really is overly sweet.

Hux has been justifying his actions to himself one way or another for a few months now. It was easy to rework them in a framework he was familiar with. It was about winning and survival. His treasonous actions weren’t actually treason; he was putting the First Order back on its right path, saving it from Ren.

Because the problem isn’t that Ren beat him to it. It’s that, looking back, it seems inevitable. Someone was bound to be told they weren’t good or strong enough. Hux just didn’t expect it would end up being him. He had, after all, dedicated most of his life to making sure that wasn’t the outcome.

After they get the transmission from the Unknown Regions talking about the work of generations amounting to this new Sith Galactic Order, he wonders if there’s even anything to save about the First Order. And if there isn’t, where does that leave him?

In any case, he wants more, as he always does. This time, he keeps mistaking wanting something more for himself as wanting something more _from_ himself. Something both within and out of his reach. His hands don’t know how to move differently, though.

Hux stares at the cracked and grimy ceiling of the room they’re in. Not even the weight of Dameron on top of him succeeds at distracting him. “He’s going to be in Mustafar in a couple of days. Corvax Fen, to be precise,” he finally says.

“I wish you had warned me you were going to talk about him _before_ I got your dick out,” Dameron says and sits back on Hux’s thighs. “What is he doing there?”

It’s not Ren’s first mystical quest, just his most recent one. It feels different. Everything feels different since they got the transmission. “He’s searching for some mysterious object. A Sith artifact. He doesn’t share, least of all with me.”

“Do you think—?”

“We got a transmission purporting to be from Emperor Palpatine,” Hux says, only one of the things he wants to say. This one feels safer. Even if he can tell it’s completely nonsensical. “It mentioned the rise of the Sith. The day of revenge.”

“When was this?”

“A couple of days back.”

“And you’re only telling me this now?” He climbs off of Hux’s lap and sits on the bed, his elbows on his knees. “We have to go there.”

“Do not go there. I will tell you what he finds.”

“Will you wait a week this time?” he asks coldly but stops Hux from tucking his dick back into his pants.

“Do you still want to fuck?” Hux doesn’t exactly have room to judge because he is still hard, though that’s just an expected side effect of being around Dameron.

“Yeah, but don’t worry, it’s all you. Nothing to do with Emperor Palpatine.”

Something deep and desperate, urgent and trembling comes out and manifests itself in the way he pulls Dameron’s hips into his lap and slides easily into him. He bends his head and buries his face on Dameron’s neck, brushes his lips against his pulse point, and when Dameron tilts his head back, he bites and sucks on the same spot.

It’s not the first time he’s left a mark and Dameron has never complained. It must take only a couple of days for them to fade and maybe at one point Hux won’t be able to leave them on him and someone else will take over.

He feels his heart race faster and then his throat closes up, his breath coming out loud and labored. He blinks and rears back, feeling more panicked than anytime Dameron had pointed a blaster in his direction.

Dameron’s legs come up and wrap themselves around his hips, holding him in place. He looks just as alarmed as Hux feels which Hux shouldn’t feel reassured by but does. His hand reaches for his face and Hux’s flinches away, so he says, “hey, hey, come here.”

He pulls him down, holds the side of his face while he kisses him tenderly, slowly, gasping into his mouth with the increasing force of Hux’s thrusts, the fast pace of his hips, the desperate friction their bodies seek.

Hux rests his forehead on Dameron’s chest afterward; the way his spine accommodates the position is only a little awkward. He feels the panic that engulfed him earlier subside and leave naked confusion in its wake.

Dameron trails his hand from the top of his spine to the back of his skull and back again, his touch lingering and careful.

He rolls over and stares at the ceiling, feels the bed shift, and then Dameron says, "what was it you wanted to tell me?”

“When?” he asks without turning to look at him.

“The past few times we’ve met.”

“Nothing,” he says automatically, then sighs. “If you take him down—”

“When,” Dameron says firmly, interrupting him, correcting him.

“If you take him down, what will—?” His question stalls there, like every other time he has tried it in his head. He says instead, “I can’t believe Kylo Ren got to call himself Supreme Leader and I didn’t.”

Dameron laughs, moves closer, and condescendingly pats his middle when he says, “poor baby. You’ll live.”

His hand is warm and grounding against Hux’s skin and he doesn’t move it away.


End file.
